Oldest human fossil discovered

A piece of human lower jaw tooth excavated in Ethiopia, Africa, dated to 2.8 million years ago, shows that human history dates back 400,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Fossil of lower jaw bone found in Ethiopia. Photo: Discovery News.

Scientists unearthed the fossil in the Ledi-Geraru area of ​​Afar State, northern Ethiopia. Previously, the oldest known human fossils dated back about 2.3 - 2.4 million years. The discovery pushes back the history of human evolution by about 400,000 years.

“Three million years ago, humans were relatively ape-like, living in trees and walking on two legs,” said Brian Villmoare, a researcher at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who led the study of the newly discovered fossil. “They lived in the forest, had small brains, and didn’t eat meat or use tools.”

"After two million years, humans had large brains, used stone tools and ate meat. Therefore, this transition period was extremely important in terms of human evolution."

Villmoare and colleagues suggest that the newly discovered human tooth fossil may be the common ancestor of two separate human lineages that split about 2.3 million years ago, one remaining in Ethiopia and the other moving to Tanzania.

According to Discovery News, because only a piece of lower jaw bone was found, scientists cannot say more about the rest of this individual's body.

"However," Villmoare added, "the bone fragment has elements that show a reduction of the lower jaw, consistent with an evolutionary adaptation to the Homo genus."

According to VnExpress